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ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
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With three Top 25 albums and three Top 10 singles in the past seven years, I guess the question isn't whether he placed this year, it's where his latest instant classic Sea Change landed in a incredibly strong music year.
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SINGLES OF THE YEAR
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Missy Elliott may have lost more than 70 pounds, but her beats keep getting fatter. Have the nonsensical rhymes of "Work It" outdone last year's smash "Get Ur Freak ON"?
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THE LARRY AWARDS
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Don't get scared now. The LARRY Awards don't include categories like Best Country Vocal Colloration. And Avril Lavigne isn't up for Best New Artist either. But she's got the Guilty Pleasure Award and Most Annoying Canadian all tied up.
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PREVIOUS YEARS
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Oasis ringleaders Noel and Liam Gallagher haven't felt the success of a good album since 1996. Take a look back at other top artists of years past.
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Introduction |
#25-11 |
#10-1 |
Honorable Mentions
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The Mooney Suzuki
Electric Sweat
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The intense energy of early New York garage punk outfits like MC5 and The Stooges are reborn in form of the Mooney Suzuki, whose spastic second album grabs you by your mod wear and never lets go. Undeniably emulating their predecessors on Electric Sweat, they don't pretend to be musical innovators. But they perform with such a tireless vigor, that it doesn't matter in the slightest. The lenghthy guitar solos, the corny harmonies, the song-closing feedback are half done tongue-in-cheek and half to seriously bring fun back to rock and roll.
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Sahara Hotnights
Jennie Bomb
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The Hives and the (International) Noise Conspiracy might have partly opened the door for a unexpected Swedish invasion in alternative music. But the real standout act has been the women of Sahara Hotnights, who can loosely be described as a stance-free Sleater-Kinney on the dancefloor. From Jennie Bomb's bangin' opener "Alright Alright (Here's My Fist Where's the Fight)," Sahara Hotnights captivate listeners as they zip through a half-hour of glam-punk adrenaline rushes. They are loud, they're seductive, and they're out-of-control.
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Sonic Youth
Murray Street
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Moving away from the contrived experimentation labored on the past decade's worth of projects, Sonic Youth in 2002 is the closest they've come to their original sound in years. It seems as though they've arrived at the conclusion that they can't possibly be the innovators they once were. Instead, Sonic Youth created Murray Street with fierce beauty, revealing a new sincerity interspersed with screeching drones and hypnotic reverberations. It's a logical progression from a band of reinvention. An album that is, above all, effortlessly exquisite.
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Spoon
Kill the Moonlight
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On their follow-up to last year's critical breakthrough Girls Can Tell, Spoon takes a big dip into indie-pop soup, soaking up the catchiest moments in the history of alternative music. Pulling from early influences like Big Star and Elvis Costello to brit pop big shots like Supergrass and Oasis, frontman Britt Daniel proves that you don't have to rock-out to be retro. Aside from clever lyrics and playful, pulsing beats, it's Daniels' too-coy-to-make-noise voice that helps his band from Austin, TX shine without worry of being yesterday's next big thing.
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Beck
Sea Change
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Finding out that Beck's follow-up to the funked up, sex-fueled Midnite Vultures would be a low-key, Mutations-esque cool down wasn't really a surprise. He's been swaying back and forth between his wild genre-mashing side and his softer, sweeter side since 1996's Odelay. The true shocker was to find out how lyrically straightforward Beck was willing to be. And it's that combination of true vulnerability and beautifully fragile songs that makes Sea Change, by far, the most emotionally powerful and sensitive work of his career.
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N.E.R.D.
In Search of...
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Music's hottest producers were supposed to give us one of the best albums of last year. But after scrapping an album made with hip-hop beats that was already receiving critical acclaim, N.E.R.D. (hitmakers the Neptunes plus their hometown friend Shay) re-recorded every track with live rock instrumentation. The result is a seamless blend of rock and rhymes on all 12 track all brilliant enough to stand as hits on their own. Like "Lapdance," a raunchier older cousin to Nelly's "Hot in Herre," and "Tape You," a hilarious tale of two ladies, a guy and a video camera.
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Super Furry Animals
Rings Around the World
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The sonic expedition of Rings Around the World has elements of everything from electronica to brit-pop to psychedelica to punk and goes from joy to depression in a split second. A collage of styles and moods that Welsh band Super Furry Animals pulls together masterfully and that sounds more and more miraculous as the CD progresses. Clever and consistent songwriting (on songs like "Receptacle for the Respectable" and "Sidewalk Serfer Girl") holds the album together more than anything.
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Bright Eyes
Lifted
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Conor Oberst was this year's indie it-boy collecting accollades for both Desaparecidos, his hard-edged side band, and for his more sensitive (and superior) project Bright Eyes. On Lifted, or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, Oberst creates gorgeous and, at times, exhuberant melodies to act as consolers to a book of lyrics seemingly written and performed at wit's end. He pushes emo to its artistic limits with musically shifts comparable to Neutral Milk Hotel and a voice that could make the Sesame Street theme sound like angst.
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RJD2
Deadringer
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When the debut album from Columbus-native RJD2 hit shelves, it immediately drew comparisons to DJ Shadow's electronic hip-hop masterpiece Endtroducing.... More so than DJ Shadow himself. While the connections are obvious, Deadringer, the first Definitive Jux release from a non-MC, shouldn't be blown off as a replica. RJD2 makes music that is both inventive and enjoyable, mastering a combination that seems to be a big feat in electronic music. You instantly know he's an artist taking his craft seriously not your average button pusher.
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Wilco
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
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Before Wilco, it may have seemed contradictory to call an alt-country band one of the most innovative bands of the past ten years. But Jeff Tweedy and co. have proven that having one foot firmly planted in traditional roots rock doesn't mean your music can't be progressive. On Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, they demonstrate a perfect merge of pure emotional sophistication and the desire to destroy all rules of rock-and-roll convention. (A combination that even Radiohead can't even seem to pull off anymore.) Wilco is truly a band that gets better with time and this year they made the album they've worked toward for their entire careers.
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>>Honorable Mentions
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